On Wednesday, Texas and Florida filed a sweeping lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, seeking to overturn more than two decades of policy that have shaped how Americans access the most commonly used abortion drug in the country. The states are challenging the FDA’s original 2000 approval of mifepristone, its recent authorization of a new generic version, and a series of later policies that expanded access to the medication, including via mail delivery.
These actions, according to the lawsuit, were “ arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, not in accordance with law, and therefore invalid under the Administrative Procedure Act.”
The complaint claims that the agency failed to adequately evaluate the drug’s safety and improperly relaxed safeguards under political pressure.
The body of evidence from more than 100 studies around the world demonstrates that mifepristone is both a reliable and low-risk way to end a pregnancy.
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“These lawsuits have nothing to do with the safety of this medication and everything to do with making it harder for people to get an abortion,” Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement. “Politicians in Texas and Florida are asking for a nationwide ban on a safe and effective medication that millions of Americans have used since the FDA first approved it 25 years ago. Anyone who believes that our access to essential medicines should be based on science, not political ideology, should be disgusted by these legal attacks.”
The Texas-Florida suit is the latest in a series of long-running challenges brought by Missouri, Kansas and Idaho, part of a broader attempt by conservative states to chip away at access to abortion. The Supreme Court last year dismissed the original private plaintiffs for lack of standing, but the states involved have continued pressing claims that the FDA overstepped when it loosened prescribing rules and later cleared a generic version of the drug.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in June that the FDA would review the safety of mifepristone, but release of the report has been delayed until after next year’s midterm elections. As Bloomberg reports, the delay may help minimize the role of abortion in a contentious election year.
